The Texas Rangers organization sucks

I try to go to at least a few ballgames every summer, and I love the experience. The vast green fields of the Big A or Dodger Stadium, the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, and the families taking out their kids to see our national pastime and enjoying some wholesome time together.

Unfortunately, there are people who show up, get drunk, and spew obscenities in front of the kids. They ruin things for everyone. And they ought to get kicked out. But this is just plain stupid:

A Texas woman attending a baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees said she was asked to turn her "Yankees Suck" T-shirt inside out.

Kristen Knapp-Webb of Carrollton said she went to the game Tuesday in Arlington with her husband, Walter, to celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary and she wore the T-shirt, which was an anniversary gift from Walter, The Dallas Morning News reported Friday.

Knapp-Webb said a security guard at the stadium approached her before the game and told her she needed to turn the shirt inside out or leave the ballpark.

"I said, 'But it's not profane. Why do I have to change my shirt?'" Knapp-Webb said. "He said, 'The Texas Rangers organization considers that shirt to be profane.'"

If that's the case, the Texas Rangers organization needs to grow the hell up. People these days say that things "suck," and that's just a fact of life. If they're such a bunch of pantywaists that they can't accept that, well, they can go to heck, goshdarnit.

(I hope that wasn't too harsh. I've never seen a game there, and I wouldn't want to be banned preemptively.)

Because I've got nothing...

...how about a picture of Elisha Cuthbert in a bikini?

Mmmmm...pouty. And bikini-iey, I guess. Which is better, now that I think of it. (Click for bigger.)

I really tried to find some kind of story where someone got drunk or high and did something dumb (and possibly died or ended up nude hilariously as a result), but I couldn't find anything good. I hope this makes up for my failings, somehow.

"Take the suspicious circumstances under which my wife died, please"

I've never been married even once, so it goes without saying that I've never been accused of killing one of my wives and suspected in the disappearance of another. That said, if I found myself in Drew Peterson's shoes, I don't think this is exactly the tack I'd be taking:

Drew Peterson cracked jokes live from jail on Wednesday on a Chicago radio show that he called collect. The former Bolingbrook police officer, charged in his third wife's death, offered snippets of a comedy routine on WLS-AM Radio's "Mancow & Cassidy" show.

"$20 million bond. Legal fees: tens of thousands. Being falsely accused of a homicide that didn't happen: priceless," Peterson said in a spoof of a MasterCard commercial.

Peterson, who once proposed a "Win a Date With Drew" contest, offered a jail version called "Win a Conjugal Visit with Drew." He also joked about prison showers, his legal fees and his "bling" handcuffs, saying humor is how he deals with stress.

Um, while it's been said that laughter is the best medicine, I don't think anyone has ever postulated that it's an effective legal defense.

Scum

I don't have any kids, but this story makes my blood boil. Perhaps it's because I keep picturing the baby as one of my friends' little nieces. Or maybe it's just because I'm, you know, a relatively decent human being:

A Tennessee woman who allegedly borrowed a friend's baby to go shoplifting has been charged with abusing the boy by using him to assault a security guard.

Camilla Fields, 26, of Memphis is charged with both child abuse and assault, The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal reported. Police say Fields, who was holding the 2-month-old boy in a car seat, swung it at a Wal-Mart security guard last Wednesday.

The boy's mother, Stacey Cleaves, 26, was outside the store during the incident, police said. She allegedly provided false information about Fields and is charged with false reporting and child neglect.

Investigators say Fields took the baby into a bathroom and pretended to change his diaper, actually concealing stolen items.

When she hit the guard with the car seat, it fell, landing with the baby's face down. She picked it up and ran off, pushing it at the guard.

The baby, thankfully, wasn't seriously hurt. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone, though, in hoping that both of the women die painfully in a fire.

Thank you

This week's cynical attempt to attract traffic

So, I heard that House actress Olivia Wilde topped the Maxim Hot 100 list. I may as well try to capitalize on that by posting...

Meow! (click for bigger)

The wrong commercial at the wrong time

I was just watching a syndicated rerun of Scrubs, and the first commercial they ran after it ended was a dog food ad that included a little dog riding on a vacuum cleaner while its owner chuckled at its cute hijinks. What's so wrong about that? Well, the woman mentions her cute little dog's name, and it's...

Ugh

Just when you thought people couldn't get any more tacky, well, someone gets an idea like this:

The odyssey of Mary Kay Letourneau, which began years ago when she was a 34-year-old teacher who raped a sixth-grade student, has now evolved into "Hot for Teacher" night at a Pioneer Square bar.

But the bar's owner says the event is all in fun, and he hopes people take it in the right spirit.

Letourneau, who eventually served time for raping her former student then later married him after her release from prison, will be hosting the event Saturday at Fuel Sports Eats & Beats on Washington Street.

Letourneau's former student, Vili Fualaau, will be there, too. He'll be the DJ, spinning Top 40 and club classic hits all night.

Fuel's owner, Mike Morris, said he realizes having Letourneau host a "Hot Teacher" night could be touchy and might rub some people the wrong way.

But the way he figures it, "Mary's done her time. She's served her sentence. They're now married; they have kids together."

"It's turned into sort of a love story," he says. "I realize it had a sick twist at the beginning, but they're both adults now. They're both married by the state of Washington. So, it's just go and have fun on a Saturday night - and if people are looking to have some fun, just come check us out."

Yeah, I think I'll pass on that. I don't really like to hang out at bars that show up on the Megan's Law website.

A new Olympic doping scandal?

Man, it's gonna be epic when they spark up the torch in Greece:

The ceremonial torch for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada, resembles a hand-rolled marijuana joint, observers say.

Unofficially designated British Columbia's largest cash crop, marijuana is popular in Canada's westernmost province, and the Toronto Star's bureau there said there's a lot of nudging and winking about the torch's similarity to a "spliff."

"I'm sure the organizers didn't intend for it to look like a joint, but that's what a lot of people are seeing," said Jodie Emery, editor of Cannabis Culture magazine.

Yeah, um, a lot of people see a lot of things. Especially when, well, you can see where this is going.

(Yeah, I'm implying that they're high.)

I feel bad for the little tyke

And, no, I don't really mean the twelve-year-old:

Schoolboy Alfie Patten, who made headlines earlier this year when it was reported he had got his girlfriend pregnant when aged just 12, is not the baby's father after all, the Sun said Tuesday.

In February, media said Patten's 15-year-old girlfriend Chantelle Stedman had fallen pregnant after a night of unprotected sex, possibly making Patten Britain's youngest father when she gave birth to daughter Maisie.

"I thought it would be good to have a baby. I didn't think about how we would afford it," he told the Sun at the time.

It turns out that after the media reported on the whole thing, "other boys came forward to say they had had sex with Stedman." DNA tests subsequently proved that Alfie wasn't the baby daddy, but showed that a 14-year-old was.

That baby sure has a great future, I tell you.

Condolences

My IRL best friend Andy lost his grandma yesterday. I'd send you to his blog, but it's password-protected, so if any of the two or three other people who bother to read this would like to send him a kind word, this would be a good place to do so.

Although it probably doesn't mean much coming from me, I hope she's in a better place now.

Life imitates old Simpsons episodes

And here I always thought Garfield hated Mondays, not Fridays:

Officials at Ohio's Hiram College said a statue of President James Garfield was decapitated only hours after its dedication ceremony.

The officials said the 95-year-old sandstone statue of the 20th U.S. president, who was assassinated in 1881 before completing a full year in office, was dedicated Thursday at the college's Garfield Institute for Public Leadership and the head of the monument was noticed missing the next morning, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Monday.

Having been executed more than a hundred years ago, Charles Guiteau is probably not considered a suspect in the crime.

Traffic

Mine has been in the doldrums lately, which suggests that people might not be as interested in stories about stupid people as they used to be. So, how do you remedy something like that? Well, I met up with fellow Moronblogger xbradtc for beers a few weeks back, and he suggested that a little cheesecake might help. Now, brad is an ar-tard, but he gets more traffic than I do, so let's try a little experiment, shall we? I mean, could it hurt if I posted a photo of Lucy Liu in a bikini?

Cynical? Yes. Hot? Also yes. Oh, hell yes. Click the pic for bigger.

Doomed romance?

I'm not married, and I never have been, so perhaps I'm not the right person to weigh in on this topic, but this doesn't seem like the most auspicious theme for a wedding. Yeah.

The world really is going to hell

Okay, what the hell is going on when the cops have to do this?

Police cracking down on rowdy Amish youths ticketed a teenager for having beer in his horse-drawn buggy when they pulled him over on a western New York road. They said the 17-year-old was charged with underage possession of alcohol after he was stopped by deputies late Monday night in the town of Leon, 40 miles south of Buffalo.

[...]

Patrols were stepped up after an Amish elder's property was vandalized when he confronted youths about their drinking and listening to radios.

They have radios now? Just wait until they discover internet porn. It's all downhill from there.

Ah, memories

There's a time and a place that's appropriate for just about everything. This was neither:

Students who attended a high school prom in Pennsylvania received commemorative shot glasses, a move administrators say was a poor decision.

Juniors and seniors at Warwick High School in Lititz, Pa., got the shot glasses rather than a picture frame given to the girls and a money clip given to the boys, as was done last year, WGAL-TV of Lancaster, Pa., reported Monday.

"Unfortunately, this year the junior class didn't have quite as much money," said Assistant Principal Scott Galen.

Look on the bright side. If the economy picks up next year, maybe they'll be able to raise enough cash to order ashtrays.

CSI: China

Well, they're always in the last place you look:

A rescue team which failed to find a missing visitor at a tourist hotspot in northern China got a nasty surprise when it stumbled upon seven corpses instead.

The team had been scouring the peaks around Taishan Mountain in Shandong province for the Beijing tourist who vanished on April 28, the Qilu Evening Post said.

"We accidentally found seven corpses during our search over the past few days," the newspaper quoted one of the rescuers as saying.

The report did not say, however, how the seven may have died nor who they were. The tourist is still missing.

Well, I'm sure he or she will turn up sooner or later. Maybe in corpse form, sure, but it's not like they're lacking for living people over there. I mean, Mao Tse-Tung alone managed to kill millions of them and they still have the highest population in the world.

Clue leads cops to criminal mastermind

They say there's no such thing as the perfect crime. They say that even the smartest criminal always slips up and leaves some tiny clue. That may be true, but we're not talking about the smartest criminal here:

Police found a man accused of shoplifting because he put his address on a job application before leaving the store. Police said a 49-year-old man was arrested Tuesday on a misdemeanor theft charge after employees said he stole T-shirts and pants from a clothing store.

Police said the man stuffed the items under his shirt and the waistline of his pants before going to the checkout counter to fill out a job application. The items set off an alarm when he left the store.

I don't know if they give out a Nobel Prize for Stupid Thievery, but I'm pretty sure we've got a potential winning candidate here.

(Okay, I know damn well that they don't give a Nobel Prize for that, but you get the idea.)

Stealing home

No, I'm not talking about something that happened during a baseball game:

Police in Greece say robbers near Athens have stolen everything including the kitchen sink, lifting a prefabricated home off its foundation and spiriting it away.

Police say the owner went to visit his 750-square-foot (70-square meter) vacation home Monday in the coastal area of Rafina, 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) east of Athens, and discovered it was missing, along with its contents.

The article goes on to say that the thieves likely used a crane to load the house onto a trailer. You'd think someone might have noticed that. Which really proves that the advice my late Grandpa gave me about never moving into a neighborhood where all your neighbors are completely deaf and blind was pretty solid. Thanks, Grandpa.

When teaspoons are outlawed...

...only outlaws will have...yeah, you can pretty much see where this is going:

A British shopper says she was asked to show proof she was older than 18 when she bought teaspoons and other picnic equipment at a supermarket.

The receipt for her purchase was posted on nannyknowsbest.blogspot.com, a Web site devoted to undermining what founder Ken Frost calls "the all-pervasive nanny state," The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday. The shopper said a clerk at the Asda branch in Halifax in Yorkshire told her at least one killing had been committed with a teaspoon.

That high-pitched whirring sound you hear coming from across the Atlantic is Winston Churchill spinning in his grave over what a bunch of clueless ninnies his countrymen have become. Seriously, these people's elders managed to survive the Blitz. Today, they're worried about someone getting killed with the least dangerous piece of silverware in any given kitchen. Great.

It's nice to have a functioning computer again

I picked up my new (well, new-ish, anyway) laptop this morning. Other than having to find all my previous bookmarks and learning to deal with some of the quirks of Vista, it seems to be a pretty decent machine. Regular blogging should resume soon.

Not that anyone really cares...

...but blogging will be pretty light for the next few days. You see, my laptop went to electronics heaven this weekend (it was seven years old, which is like 100 in people years) and I need to find a suitable (and cheap) replacement. A refurbished Compaq from Fry's looks like the most likely candidate so far.